1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vibrating plate system having an assembly of at least two vibrating plates that are mechanically coupled to one another via a coupling device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vibrating plates used as soil compaction devices standardly have a lower mass that has a soil contact plate that is acted on by a vibration exciter, as well as an upper mass that is capable of elastic motion relative to the lower mass and that carries a drive for the vibration exciter. Such vibrating plates have proven to be outstandingly effective for soil compaction in practice.
However, for larger surface compaction jobs, larger roller compactors are preferably used that have two vibrating rollers and, compared with a single vibrating plate, produce a higher output per surface area. Due to their high static weight, however, these roller compactors cannot be used for all cases of application.
In order to enable the production of a similarly high output per surface area with vibrating plates, it is known to mechanically couple individual vibrating plates to one another with the aid of a coupling device to form an assembly. If, for example, two or three vibrating plates are to be connected alongside one another, twice or three times the working width can be achieved thereby. Such an assembly of a plurality of vibrating plates is known for example from GB-A-944 922.
DE-A-100 53 446 also describes various possibilities for connecting vibrating plates to form an assembly. Although this publication already describes a very highly developed control concept for the remote operation of a vibrating plate system formed by an assembly of a plurality of vibrating plates, it is desirable to further develop these concepts. In particular, it is of interest to keep the control outlay of software and hardware that additionally results from the assembly of a plurality of vibrating plates as low as possible, in order to avoid unnecessarily increasing the overall cost of the assembly.